We all have one.

Its occasional appearances are unexpected and often stressful. Your disingenuous apprehension towards it fuels a deep, subconscious inner debate, of which to even recognize or acknowledge is a cause for even more distress. Nervous laughter, sweaty palms, and darting eyes herald every arrival, each of which forcibly excavates deeply buried unpleasant memories, and raw emotions of shame, fear, and regret which echo in your mind even long after it leaves again…leaving another fearful mystery as to when it will next, inevitably return. Paradoxically, we all share the fear of its arrival, yet its true nature is something so inherently unique to all of us that it is almost chillingly beautiful, inseparable from the rich tapestry of human existence and each person’s own life experience.

Max’s is likely Drop It While It’s Hot, and I would have no doubt that even to this day, its mention to him will recall terrifying images of a dark and snowy night and a harrowing first real close brush with death. Maybe also even of the forbidding memories of the now blossoming homoerotic love that grew from the seeds planted that night between him and his only passenger, drawn together by the capricious winds of fate and the seemingly arbitrary nature of the physical world, and the dark indulgence of the survivor’s guilt they shared between each other.

Mine is Kylie Minogue’s 2001 #1 hit single Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.

The first time was well over seven years ago, when I was still a brash young driver, confident enough in my own abilities to take risks but still not wise enough yet to appropriately weigh the consequences. Eternally cocky and angry at the world, the self-indulgent mindset of every teenage driver.

Looking to make a right turn Northbound out of a quiet residential road onto Bayview Avenue, I made one of my very first real, regrettable decisions as a driver, one that still haunts me to this day. That stretch of Bayview has a legal maximum speed limit that was and remains 60 km/h, but due to it’s clear surrounding sight lines and lack of strategic positions for York Regional Police speed traps, is often treated as a 70 km/h zone…which – damn my youthful hubris – is something I was completely aware of. And yet I pressed on anyway.

The boxy, aquamarine green appearance of the van I tried to beat was initially nonthreatening and unassuming. Drunk with unbridled ambition and lured into a temporary sense of immortality by the catchy, electropop/disco stylings of one of Australia’s greatest singer-songwriters of all time, I sped out of the side street I was on with no regard to human life nor oncoming traffic. It would be the last mistake I would ever make – I had overestimated the distance between the van and myself, and the resulting collision left the van’s driver and six passengers dead and I was forever paralyzed from the waist down after miraculously awakening from a three week long coma.

Well, I mean, not literally. He (or she, I never actually saw the driver nor if there were any other passengers in the van) didn’t actually hit me, but the brief flicker of high beams he shot me as he cut lanes and sped past me hit just as hard and hurt just as bad as any actual collision ever could have. I’m still jolted out of sleep on some nights, waking up covered in cold sweat, screaming in terror, as that catchy beat echoes in my ears, taunting me as it slowly fades out.

Over the years, it would return again and again, always just flickering on through the current radio station I had on at completely unexpected moments. And always foreshadowing some horrible near death experience (or at least close brushes with minor paint damage).

Months later, while bobbing my head again to the song (which I hadn’t yet realized was the song), I was turning left off of the stop sign on Brimley to get to AL’s house, and didn’t see the pedestrian crossing the road. I had to suddenly brake, and sit in the middle of the intersection for two of the longest seconds of my life, like the ass I was, before eventually completing the turn. Years later on Halloween, I did it again to a group of witches and skeletons crossing Queen’s Park, again with Kylie on the radio. Once I had to brake unusually hard to avoid the sudden stopping of the car in front of me while driving on some random street. Bad driver in front of me? Or was Can’t Get You Out Of My Head so deeply in my own head that I just didn’t notice early enough? Or was it also playing in the car in front of me, affecting the driver of that car in the same way!?! I mean I haven’t actually gotten into an accident in all the years I’ve been driving, but it seems like it’s just a matter of time.

It’s gotten to the point now where I just immediately start panicking whenever it comes on. I realize now as I write that last sentence that I could just change the station…but these are things that apparently only occur to me in hindsight. Also, what if the act of changing the station itself is a brief window of vulnerability and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts? I can’t risk it.

The only thing you can really do is hope it fades away in time, and becomes obscure enough that occurrences happen farther and farther apart. And if you really though about it, you could possibly reasonably pass it off to the fact that all hot songs get a lot of radio time when they first come out, and it just coincides with the probability that young drivers tend to get into more potential accidents than when they’ve had a couple of years of experience under their belts.

But then how do you explain what happened this morning when I heard it again on the Mix 99.9 FM (Which is “Virgin Radio” now? The eff?), panicked, and almost didn’t check my blindspot while cutting lanes in my panic? Explain that! The song is eight years old now! Radio stations never play old songs! I never listen to the radio! And I never drive dangerously! I can only conclude that the coincidences here are too much to be called coincidences anymore.

This song haunts me. And it will chase me forever until it kills me.

As will your song.

Now here is Damn It Feels Good To Be A Banker: The Musical, depicting the animosity between two business units that both regularly bitchslap Technology for free.

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